Platonic Stoicism - Stoic Platonism

The Dialogue between Platonism and Stoicism in Antiquity

Mauro Bonazzi, Christoph Helmig (eds)

Publication Year: 2008

This book examines the important but largely neglected issue of the interrelation between Platonism and Stoicism in Ancient Philosophy. Several renowned specialists in the fields of Stoic and Platonic analyse the intricate mutual influences between Stoic and Platonic philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the Imperial Age, and after. Although it has been repeatedly claimed that the phenomenon addressed in this book could best be labelled eclecticism, it emerges from the various articles collected here that the situation is much more complicated. Far from being eclectics, most Stoics and Platonists consciously appropriated their material in order to integrate it into their own philosophical system. The dialogue between Platonists and Stoics testifies to active debate and controversy on central topics such as psychology, epistemology, physics, and ethics. This book will deepen our understanding of the dialogue between different philosophical schools in Antiquity. The results presented here teach one clear lesson: Platonism and Stoicism were by no means monolithic blocks, but were continuously moulded by mutual influence and interaction.

Title Page, Copyright

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

According to an ancient tradition, Zeno of Citium, founder of the Stoic
school had been a pupil of the last head of the Old Academy, namely Polemo,
son of Philostratus. The relationship between Polemo and Zeno can
be seen as the starting point of a fruitful and intriguing history of mutual
influence and enrichment.1 ...

Platonism and Stoicism in Vergil’s Aeneid

In this volume on the intersection of Platonism and Stoicism, special attention
is due to the early Roman empire, after the influences of Posidonius,
Antiochus of Ascalon, Eudorus, Cicero, and Arius Didymus, when some
began to think of the two philosophies as a single set of great ideas. ...

Eudorus’ psychology and Stoic Ethics

The second book of Stobaeus’ Anthologium has often been used as evidence
to reconstruct the position of Eudorus of Alexandria and its relation as
much to Stoicism as to Platonism. Indeed, if scholars of Stoicism have tried
to show how this evidence proves Eudorus’ dependence on Stoic doctrines, ...

Onomastic Reference in Seneca. The Case of Plato and the Platonists

The title of this paper stands in need of explanation. First of all, I would
like to stress that my primary concern is not with the conceptual relation
of Seneca’s work to Plato and/or the Platonist tradition – a vast subject
in itself. Rather I will pursue the more modest purpose of inventorizing
and evaluating such explicit references to Plato ...

Seneca, Plato and Platonism: The case of Letter 65

It is not uncommon to use Seneca’s letters, especially 58 and 65, primarily
as sources for the development of Platonism; it is also common to study
these letters primarily in the light of Platonic tradition;1 as a result, it is natural
to devote the majority of one’s scholarly attention only to the first half
of each letter. ...

The Stoic Background to the Middle Platonist Discussion of Fate

The treatise On Fate probably dates from the second century AD. There are
no very firm grounds for the dating or, indeed, for its not being by Plutarch
himself; the claim that it is not rests chiefly on its scholastic nature.1 It shows
little of the intellectual excitement characteristic of Plutarch’s writing. ...

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations: How Stoic and How Platonic?

I tackle here a longstanding scholarly question: how far Marcus’ Meditations
reflect orthodox Stoic thinking or a more mixed or eclectic approach,
influenced by Platonic and other theories. I approach this question especially
through a close reading of a number of passages on psychology which
seem to display Platonic-style dualism. ...

Calcidius on God

In his 4th c. AD Latin commentary on the Timaeus, Calcidius very cleverly
uses structuring devices from Plato’s original to arrange his exposition.
Thus a crucial junction in the commentary, as in the Timaeus (47e), is the
distinction between ‘the works of reason’ and those ‘of necessity,’ ...

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